Brian1965,
Yes, the z620 startup has to be wrong, only updated the BIOS from it's 2014 version and it's became an even slower-starting mess. I'm going to go through the BIOS settings to see if something has been changed- RAID mode or whatever I can find. The Passmark marks did improve overall and although the CPU mark did drop a bit, the disk mark moved from abysmal to slightly less abysmal. The terrible 2010 Seagate 750GB HD may be a factor- perhaps all this happens anyway but too quickly on an SSD. I have a Dell Dimension E520 with a Core2 Duo E6700 and a pair of 2009 WD 320GB drives that runs the television machine and it does start with the Press CNTL R RAID configuration screen but that system originally had a RAID 1 and it doesn't fly through eight or ten other screens. The reason I think the slow disk is at fault stems from the fact that the z420 starts so quickly on the Intel 730- ready to use in about 20 seconds and when I tried the Z Turbo drive yesterday it went to the "Starting the computer for the first time" much faster than that.
The GPT partitioning appears to have so many advantages, I think I'd like to gradually migrate all the systems that can use it. Apparently, GPT can run on systems with MBR drives. Are all your drives now GPT?
Does this new disk scheme seem plausible /sensible to you? >
1. Setup a new master C:\ on the Z Turbo Drive on the Z620,
2. As the z620 and Z420 use the same BIOS, move that drive to the Z420. The copy of Windows should automatically activate. On several systems I've loaded new Window: the z420 about a year ago, and the Precision T3500 and T5500 did not ask for a product key, all of them just installed and activated.
3. Clone the Z Turbo to the Intel 730 in the z420
4. Move the Intel 730 to the z620. My hope is that Windows will automatically load the z420 chipset driver.
The value of setting up on the z620 is that it won't interrupt work on the z420. I have a lot of fussy software and I would say loading, updating, and making basic settings of everything is a 12-hour process. If I could do that for both systems at once, over two or three days it's a help.
With the e5-1660 v z420 I setup the C: on a mech'l disk so I could upgrade, optimize, defragment, and consolidate it, avoiding wear on the SSD memory and then migrated it to the SSD. i was told that the access is so fast on an SSd, that it's not necessary, but I thought it can't hurt. The Passmark disk score was well above average, but SSD's do start the data in a differnet spot.
My idea now is to setup a Remote Desktop so I can setup renderings on the z420 and then send the files and start them on the z620 from the same K/B mouse, and monitors. When the z620 is fully setup though I intend to test the z420 and z620 to see if the 620 might become the main system. The single-thread performance of the E5-1660 v2 3.7 /4.0GHz is one of the best (Passmark 2025) , and I don't like to sell it as it's so well worked out, but I'm going to run the same models on the two systems and see if the 620 is sufficient in modeling speed- the 3.8GHz turbo speed should be good (Passmark 1888). The Precision T5500's X5680's are 1520 and still not bad witha good GPU. It's encouraging that you're using E5-2670's at the level of work you're doing. Given the small proportion of time I run renderings, I don't really need a separate system. However, the project that includes the model posted earlier also includes another much larger with 23 buildings- 2.2M sq.ft. I imagine there will be about 50-60 large renderings looming from those two parts. So, perhaps the z620 could sit in the corner and work on that awhile.
It is surprisingly that the 5900 and 7200RPM drives have similar results in some parameters, but the 4K random read /writes are 1.3 to the 5900RPM drives' . 449-.577 so the higher access times of 5900 drives are reflected for small files. The Hitachi 2TB and WD 4TB also probably have 2X and 4X 1TB platters so the access arm is traveling laterally the same distance for each platter.
Thanks for mentioning the all-rounder drive caddy adapter. The used HP adapter purchase is a regret. I bought two at $18 each ( offer from $22) These arrived somewhat dirty and scratched, appearing high mileage, and the $7.00 shipping somehow became $8.60 They are however of very good quality and I'll have one for the the Intel 730 and the other for the Samsung 840 in the z420 / E5-1620.
The world of CPU/ GPU rendering is really difficult- maddening really. In the current situation, it seems inevitable that every visualization workstation needs to have good in both. And, then there's some programs that are CUDA performance and Quadro specific- Solidworks and others will run on NVIDIA GTX- Premiere. I've tried both CPU and a bit of GPU rendering and I see definitely better quality for single images using CPU renderings, particularly in smooth color gradients, reflections and in particles and water. But that was five years ago and now the situation is changed -and more difficult to sort as it's impossible try all of them to learn and anyway, it takes quite along time to be fluent. When I was playing with Solidworks, I tried to snap a tangent to a point on a torus and I never did work out that one. Embarrassingly, I eventually did that in AutoCad 3D and exported to Sketchup where all hope of precision is abandoned anyway.
When I had the misreading temperatures in the z620 I did look briefly into HP Performance Advisor though only with regard to the temperature. I missed that it included Windows BIOS editing - that's a very thing to know- thanks.
valuable
I'm a bit curious as to the reason you bought the new copy of Windows 7? I think HP will provide a copy of the original software for that system which can be updated. In the case of the Precision T5500, Dell sent me a recovery disk with Windows free of charge and this activated automatically. I used the same disk on the T3500 and likewise it installed activated without ever entering the product key. The two z420's arrived with recovery disks that include Windows and as that disk is listed as the same for the z420 and 620. The original HD's also have a recovery partition with the HP OEM Windows as does the Z Turbo drive I bought recently. I use both original HD's for the z420's in a 3.5" USB 3 enclosure as my external backup. When I received the z620, I simply plugged the z420 E5-1660 v2 (2015) backup drive into the z620 and installed Windows from the recovery partition and updated.
Cheers,
BambiBoom_Z